Direct Response Ads Today, Direct Results Tomorrow

When executed correctly, direct response advertising not only helps advertisers reach potential customers, but encourages those same customers to engage in actions that move them closer towards a purchase. An equally appealing benefit of direct response advertisements is the easily measurable nature of the engagements, with every engagement either categorized as a directly positive or directly negative response to the advertised offer.

Before we dive into why this is a valuable advertising strategy for your business, let’s cover the basics. Direct response advertising can occur through a variety of media channels, including print, online media, radio, television and telemarketing. To encourage a consumer to respond immediately upon viewing the advertisement, a direct response mechanism ‘device’ is employed. This device can also come in various forms: a mail-in coupon, business reply card, toll-free telephone number, or clickable internet hotspot. Most retail industry sale advertisements can also be classified as direct response advertisements, in one way or another.

While this may be surprising to some, direct response advertising often outperforms social advertising on many levels. And here’s why. To be successful in social advertising, you must invest plenty of time acquiring loyal followers and data around how (and to whom) to best deliver your message. Social campaigns often also require a solid brand and audience understanding from external parties, which are costly to engage. And only once all of those steps have been completed does the wait for results begin.

While every form of successful marketing requires some investment of time, the nature of social advertising attempts to persuade consumers to purchase a product through intermittent yet consistent feed posts and exposure, resulting in incredibly lengthy wait times for a response, let alone a sale. Direct contact advertising, on the other hand, both requests and secures an immediate response. Through a clear call-to-action or direct offer, direct advertising methods such as cold calling or cold emailing require much less advertiser consideration and capital, and remain an incredibly effective way to recruit new customers. If the answer is yes? Sale. If the answer is no? Onto the next.

That’s not to say that cold, direct outreach doesn’t require intel. An element of consideration or targeting (of a certain geographic area or demographic area for example) is still, of course, required for success.

And that’s where lead generation comes in.

To be successful in direct response advertising, it is essential to obtain the credentials of your target group based on the type of direct response device you intend to use. Online lead generation allows you to not only identify potential target customers, but to contact them directly with the offer of your choosing.

Outside of your product or service, the quality of your prospect list is the single most important factor in determining the success of your marketing outreach efforts. Vastly reducing the wastage of marketing budgets on uninterested prospects, correctly targeting a list of qualified prospects with a genuine interest in your product or service can also generate tremendous amounts of revenue for your business.

Sold? Soon your leads will be, too.